Among Methodists Bradburn is regarded as one of the most eloquent and powerful preachers the denomination has produced. He had all the natural gifts of a great orator, and these, combined with fervent piety and a single and lofty purpose in preaching, invested his discourses with a charm and an influence rarely wielded by public speakers. "Possessed of a commanding figure, dignified carriage, graceful action, mellow voice, ready utterance, correct ear, exuberant imagination, an astonishing memory, and an extensive acquaintance with his mother tongue, he could move an assembly as the summer breeze stirs the standing corn."[19] This elocutionary power was not gained without much care and diligent labor. He was a hard reader, and a most painstaking sermonizer, for though he never used the manuscript in the pulpit but preached extempore, after the fashion of the times, he nevertheless prepared his discourses with great skill and labor. The following sentences from his biography will sufficiently illustrate this point.[20] "His own bold, easy, and correct English was such as no man acquires without perseverance in a right use of means. His diligence may be inferred from one of his reported sayings on leaving Manchester--that he had twelve hundred outlines of sermons untouched (not used in preaching in the circuit) at the end of three years' ministrations. The result of such endowments, improved, with such assiduity, amid all the hindrances and discouragements of a laborious and harassing vocation, was, that to be comprehensive and lucid in arrangement; beautifully clear in statement or exposition; weighty, nervous, and acute in argumentation; copious, various, and interesting in illustration; overwhelming in pathos; to wield at will the ludicrous or the tender, the animating, the sublime, or the terrible--seems to have been habitually in his power." The Rev. Richard Watson, author of the "Institutes," "walked twenty miles to hear the far-famed Mr. Bradburn preach; and he never lost the impression which that distinguished orator produced." Watson thus describes his impressions: "I am not a very excitable subject, but Mr. Bradburn's preaching affected my whole frame. I felt a thrill to the very extremity of my fingers, and my hair actually seemed to stand on end." The biographer of the Rev. Jabez Bunting says of Bradburn: "His career was brilliant and useful; and perhaps more men longed, but durst not try, to preach like him than like any other preacher of his time.... Bradburn was without exception the most consummate orator we ever heard." And the author of Bradburn's life concludes the citation of a number of testimonies with the following strongly expressed opinion of his merits as a pulpit orator: "Methodism has produced a host of preachers renowned for pulpit eloquence. The names of Benson, Lessey, Watson, Newton, Beaumont, and others, stand out in bold relief on the page of her history, but the